Quotes About Writing

As a memoirist, I may claim to write the easier-to-remember things, but I could also just be writing to sweep them away. 'Don't bother me about my past,' I'll say, 'It's out in paperback now.'

My ability maps my own writing. I haven't spent a whole lot of time biting licks from the really quick masters. That's why I'm not very good at that sort of super-fast, shreddy sweeping. So I've never considered myself a traditionally good, fast-playing guitarist.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

I was 12 and read my first romance novel; it was a sweeping desert saga, and I got to the end of it and was like, 'I want to go back and start all over again!' That emotional response to the book and getting to the end of a story you love is what inspires me to write the next book.

The nerds are my favourite sort of boys - any guy with a passion - whether it be physics or film or writing or poetry even, I think it's super sweet and it's very attractive for a female.

I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.

When we wrote 'Avenue Q,' we worked hard to create something that could be funny and satirical but also had some surprise moments of heart, moments when the music itself could become a central player and create something sweet and moving.

My sweet spot as a writer and, especially, as an essayist is sub-1500 words.

When I started writing, the deal was that publishers gave you a grand or two as an advance to buy some sweets, with the promise that they would make a big putsch with your fourth book when you'd built up a bit of a following. But by the time my fourth book came out, previously unpublished authors were the new big thing.

There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal to cancer. But even in more contemporary writing it's called 'the big C'.

Poems that come swiftly are usually the ones that you keep.

I enthuse about Scrivener to all of my friends. Some of them even listen to me and download it. This is often swiftly followed by an email complaining that it's all very confusing, and they'll stick to Microsoft Word, thanks.

My perfect day is to work incredibly well in the morning and write something wonderful, then take the dog for a walk and go for a swim in the ladies' ponds on Hampstead Heath or work in my allotment. Then I get tarted up in the evening and go out in London to dinner or the cinema.

Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue.

I write and walk and swim and drink.

I love Roger Deakin's writing, and enjoyed making a programme about wild swimming for BBC4, inspired by his book about his own aquatic adventures, 'Waterlog'.

I quickly realised that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold.

Sticking to my schedule, I've gotten over seven months ahead, which allowed me to write a 'Pearls Before Swine' movie script for the big screen.

Of course I danced a lot when I was making 'Swingers.' The swing music scene was big in Hollywood, and I went to places like The Derby. And, after I wrote it and was trying to get it made, I would go every week so I'd be good at dancing.

As far as working with Kanye and Solange, that was amazing. After 'Swing Lo Magellan', I needed a change. Getting to work in that capacity, writing for other people and working for other people as a writer and as a person who's not representing it as the front person or whatever - it's such a different perspective you can get.

The first musical stuff I worked on was after the tour for 'Swing Lo Magellan' had ended and I didn't really know what else to do. I didn't know what music I would write. I just did work for other people - arranging, producing, writing - and all of that seemed to be in L.A.

I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science.

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.